Eclipse DemoCamps 2008 - Ganymede Edition/Hamburg/Session Abstracts

Generation of format adapters for SAP XI. A model driven approach.

Frank Zimmermann (Nordakademie in cooperation with cimt ag)

The SAP Module XI is an Enterprise Integration Platform, which can be thought of as an implementation of a service oriented architecture. SAP and non SAP based systems communicate via a message oriented infrastructure. XI provides routing, transformation and monitoring services. Conversion of external message formats into the SAP internal format is done by customizable adapters. The XI component distribution includes several adapters to convert from/into external formats, but some very common formats like UN/EDIFACT or TRADACOM are missing. Users have to buy additional software from third party vendors, which is often a killer argument against a consultancy company like cimt ag. We developed a system to generate adapters directly from the definition of standards. The implementation heavily uses the MDSD facilities of the eclipse modeling project. The System uses oAWs XText to read the UN/EDIFACT message definitions, and transfers them into a EMF model. The EMF representation can be easily used to generate transformation programs, xml schema definitions and tests for the converters using oAWs XPand language. This approachs promises greater felxibility, better maintainability and better testability than traditional approaches.

Xtext 2.0

Sven Efftinge (itemis AG)

Xtext is a framework used to create external DSLs. The current version of Xtext has been well received by the community and been used in many projects. Although people say that it's never been so easy to define external DSLs, the current version has it's limitations.
Currently we're working on a completely overhauled version of Xtext (working title Xtext 2.0). In this presentation I'll give an overview of the major improvements and changes which are coming with this version and hopefully can show a short demonstration.